This was just too much for the feeble-minded Ken Ham, founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis, which operates a creation museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.

Ham spluttered:

Not only do we have to work hard to not let our kids be led astray by the anti-God teaching of the secularists, we have to work hard to not let them be led astray by compromising church leaders like Pat Robertson. Pat Robertson gives more fodder to our enemies.

Ham said that secularists are joyful about Robertson’s statement, and highlighted a comment from an atheist, who said:

I’m rooting for Pat … Not that I’m endorsing Pat’s position, but at least he seems able to glimpse the real world past his Bible-colored glasses. If he lives to be a hundred and twenty, I’ll put even money on his becoming an atheist.

Said Ham:

Note the secularist can see that Pat Robertson is not believing the Bible on this issue. I still shake my head at the number of church leaders who want to appease the secularists and accept their anti-God religion of millions of years and even molecules to man evolution.

Mr Robertson is saying that we should hold the ideas and opinions of man above the very word of God itself. It is precisely this type of compromise within the church that has caused such an erosion of people’s faith in the word of God and a mass exodus of young people from the church.

So what exactly did Robertson say to horrify the creationists?

A confused mum named Michelle wrote to Robertson’s 700 Club, expressing concern that her husband and teenage sons were doubting the authority of the Bible.

They tell me if the Bible is truth, then I should be able to reasonably explain the existence of dinosaurs. This is just one of many things they question, How do I explain things to them that the Bible doesn’t cover? I am so afraid that they are walking away from God.

Robertson replied:

Look, I know people will probably try to lynch me when I say this, but Bishop [James] Ussher – God bless him – wasn’t inspired by the Lord when he said it all took 6,000 years. It just didn’t. And you go back in time, you’ve got radiocarbon dating, you’ve got all these things, and you’ve got the carcases of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas. And so there was a time that these giant reptiles were on the earth, and it was before the time of the Bible.

Uh-oh!

He added:

So don’t try to cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That’s not the Bible. That’s Bishop Ussher. And so if you fight revealed science you’re going to lose your children, and I believe in telling them the way it was.

Mitchell would have none of it, insisting that the Bible does indeed support a young earth and that the dinosaur fossil record is consistent with the Biblical timeline.

We know that creation week lasted six ordinary days because the Bible says so. A study of the use of the Hebrew word ‘yom’ in Genesis 1 clearly indicates that God told us He created [the universe] in six ordinary, twenty-four-hour days. So how do you put millions of years into the text where it plainly does not fit?

The half-wit added:

There was no ‘before the time of the Bible,’ as Robertson claims. Dinosaurs are land animals and were created on the sixth day of creation week along with all the other land animals and man. They lived and reproduced for hundreds of years before the flood. Then God led at least two of each kind of land animal to Noah. … After the flood, the waters receded, and the dinosaurs and the other animals got off the ark and lived on earth with man. Evidently, the dinosaurs eventually went extinct like so many other creatures have over the centuries.

Both Ham and Mitchell were “saddened” that so many visible Christian speakers are “compromising their faith”.

Ham lamented:

Such leaders – including Pat Robertson – have a lot to answer to the Lord for one day. Such leaders are guilty of putting stumbling blocks in the way of kids and adults in regards to believing God’s word and the Gospel.

And here’s more bad news for creationists: Failing to teach evolution by natural selection in science lessons could lead to new free schools in England losing their funding under government changes.

The new rules state that from 2013, all free schools in England must teach evolution as:

A comprehensive and coherent scientific theory.

Hat tip: Agent Cormac (Free schools)

31 Responses to “Feathers fly as US fundie pours scorn on young earth creationism”

Ham is correct (in his own sweet way), and we all know what an idiot Robertson is. The Bible quite clearly teaches that death entered into the world purely as a result of Adam’s transgression, so how could there have been a prior creation “before the time of the Bible”? This is made very clear in the New Testament, and there is no way around it, I’m afraid!

Ham’s club of deluded creationist non-thinkers is diminishing by the minute. This wee “controversy” and the catholic kiddie rape thing are two of the most entertaining churchy things on offer at present. Pity for the catholic church kiddie victims, the rest though only have themselves to blame.

Barriejohn, this is for you. Do you know how the ancient Greeks explained the formation of Deserts? They believed that a god named Phaethon, son of Helios (god of the sun) borrowed his father’s chariot (you know, the one that he used to drag the sun across the sky). Unfortunately, Phaethon didn’t know how to drive. He lost control and veered toward the earth. The sun scorched the plains of Africa to desert. Fortunately, modern science has proven the actual source of the deserts: weather patterns, temperature due to latitude, etc.

Did you know how the ancient Jews believed the earth was created? They think some dude in the sky got lonely, so he created an entire universe. He then filled it with people (in a ridiculously contradictory genesis story in which, despite Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel being the only people alive, Cain was able to go off and find a wife in some city called Nod after murdering his brother) and created a hell specifically for the bad ones to go to after they were finished terrorizing the rest of us. Fortunately modern science has discovered the actual origin of the earth: billions of years of evolution.

I, personally, cannot wait until the day that Christianity goes the way of the Greek gods and becomes accepted as mythology.

Also, Barriejohn, the article you cited cannot be used as any sort of rebuttal. The writer uses as his only source material a document that is 2,000 years old, unverified, translated, and re-translated. It is known to have been edited, rearranged, and has had entire books excluded. It also has at least several dozen different accepted interpretations, sects, and offshoots.

But most importantly, Barriejohn, it is, above all else, a religious document. It is not fact, it is religious. It is an opinion, a collection of folk tales, and the outdated values of uneducated people in their species infancy. If someone does not accept it, then that is their choice. It does not make any difference to you, since you believe you will go to heaven regardless, so shut up. You are the worst kind of ignorant: the kind that imposes his uneducated and shallow beliefs upon those that wish to explore all possible avenues.

Fair enough: let’s pretend that since the Bible includes the creation of the universe, there is nothing before the Bible. What puzzles me is why there’s a whole bunch of stuff after the Bible. Chronologically the last time God speaks directly to any human is all the way back in the Book of Job. That gives us the second half of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament with not a word from God. Angels, Jesus, prophets, sure, they had something to day now and then. Things like Jesus saying thirty times that He would return and establish a physical kingdom on the Earth within a few decades at most (link). Which turned out to be a lie, but at least He said something. God? Nothing. And if God did say something after Job, why isn’t in the Bible? “It’s a Mystery!” is about as good an explanation as we ever get.

I hope you’re right, Robster. But unlike, say our own Stephen Green, Ham and AiG seems to have a following and resources. He is invited to talk to many numbers of children, where he teaches them to be stupid and ignorant. He has a number of tame scientists and quite an active outreach programme.

On the other hand, he has enemies among the creationist movement and seems be starting to suffer some financial crisis. Hopefully, his days are numbered. But until his organisation is exposed for the pathetic, untruthful and delusional monstrosity it really is, he is a threat.

Woggler: These people are motivated by fear – fear of change, fear of progress, fear of the unknown. They want to regress to the world of childhood, where everything was certain and the world didn’t seem such a threatening place. That is why American evangelical organizations are awash with money: they think that they can somehow stem the tide of progress that way and put the clock back to the golden days of their youth. This is why these ideas strike such a chord with the young, who look for certainties, and want to be told that the world isn’t a scary place at all, that everything happens “for a reason”, that “God” is in control of things, and that in the end everything will be OK.

We used to sing this when I was a young Christian – and we really believed it:

I know who holds the future,
And He guides me with His hand.
With God things don’t just happen;
Everything by Him is planned.
So as I face tomorrow, with its problems large and small,
I’ll trust the God of miracles –
Yield to Him my all.

As I say – very comforting, but also a very dangerous way of thinking!

The creationists and fundies cannot win against reason. Their beliefs are bizarre. Their children will meet others, the majority, who will contradict, ridicule and dissect creationist beliefs. These beliefs, in anything other than a religious context, would be enough to get you sectioned as suffering from paranoia and needing treatment. Good to know the erosion of superstition, held even by fundies, has started.

I find it interesting that some people who are spoken to by gawd are clearly deluded and some people aren’t.
Some get locked up for their entire lives. The rest who should be locked up are allowed to go free.

Peter Sutcliffe. Yorkshire ripper. He believed he was spoken to by gawd.
The pope. He has gawds direct line.
Archbishit of Canterbury. he has gawds CofE direct line.

“Barriejohn, … It does not make any difference to you, since you believe you will go to heaven regardless, so shut up. You are the worst kind of ignorant: the kind that imposes his uneducated and shallow beliefs upon those that wish to explore all possible avenues.”

er, how do I break this to you (I understand you’re new here) … from what I know of barriejohn (i.e. his previous involvement in this blog) he was being ironic. I believe that he does not actually believe the sentiments he was espousing. Read his posts again in a sarcastic tone of voice.

@ROAS: I met a man in the USA, about 10 years ago I suppose, but his comments stuck in my mind. He said that Jesus was white because he was white in all the paintings; God spoke English because the bible is written in that language; the Christian religion must be true because its leader isn’t a prophet but said he was the son of God and only a madman would say this if it wasn’t true. He had various other gems which I have forgotten although he did insist that if I met with his parson he would change my opinions about religion “in minutes.”

@Broga: He might well have done. Changed your opinions from “a relatively harmless hobby for feeble-minded intellectual weaklings” to “a dangerous mental cancer which needs to be exterminated with extreme urgency by any and every means possible”.

What I fear is these people are teaching their kids creationism as if its a fact with no evidence. They went far enough to even create a Creation Musuem and are fighting a battle to have all schools include Creationism in their science classes.

Pete H: Some of those comments are hilarious. However, I’m not at all shocked by the church that holds that “the King James Bible is the Word of God”, as this is the view of a great many protestants, even in Great Britain today.

The notion that the Bible is the word of God and therefore non-negotiable truth is an interesting one. The idea seems to be based upon little but tradition, it certainly stands upon no credible evidence. Those who are presently argueing about the age of the Earth are standing on the shoulders of Biblical literalists of the past who insisted that the Earth was flat, was stationary, and was at the centre of the universe. The Elephant in the room that the current crop of literalists are wilfully ignoring, is that once that it was admitted that the “Word of God” was in error, then it was game over. At that point it was obvious to any educated person that the “Word of God” was nothing better than the best guesses of pre-scientific people.

How ridiculous is it for someone who lives in the age of the internet, smart-phones and sat-navs, to defer to the so called wisdom of people who would regard a wheelbarrow as being hi-tech?

All thanks!
if GWB didn’t say that then he is the sort of idiot that would!
‘Imports are only coming from outside the country etc. ‘
The man was certainly a monkey. But that’s unfair to monkeys. As they’re quite intelligent.

As to the bible being the word of gawd. Hmmm.
Lets funny.
I rather recall that it isn’t even one book. Rather a set of pamphlets and ‘books’ [generous description for sure] to have been “written’ between 4000 years ago and up to the 1600 being stated as the word of gawd, And as one book.
Yes I therefore must conclude that it can only be one book, and must be the word of gawd in his incompetent best. Referring to chariots, having dragons, fighting with the sword, using candles for light, and being very keen on sacrifice as appeasement.
All pretty useful and very relevant in 2012.